UPDATE: Albany in top 10 for charter school saturation

UPDATE: The number of US charter schools grew by 9 percent in 2010, according to the Center for Education Reform. As of today, 5,453 schools now serve the families of more than 1.7 million American students.

Here are the nation’s highest percentages of charter school saturation, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. New Orleans is so high, of course, because it’s school system was washed out by Hurricane Katrina. (Albany’s charter school enroll about 2,000 Albany students and 500 students from other districts. They enroll 20 percent of Albany students)

Why do the numbers look like this? This is a diverse group of cities, what do they have in common?

The “Top 10” highest percentages of public charter school students are in these 12 districts: New Orleans Public School System (61 percent), District of Columbia Public Schools, (38 percent), Detroit Public Schools (36 percent), Kansas City, Mo. (32 percent), Dayton Public Schools, Ohio (29 percent), Flint Community Schools, Mich. (29 percent), Gary Community School Corporation, Ind. (28 percent), DeSoto Independent School District, Texas (27 percent), St. Louis Public Schools, Mo. (27 percent), Central Dauphin School District, Pa. (26 percent), Albany City School District (24, percent) and West Chester Area School District, Pa. (23 percent).

14 Responses

“New Orleans is so high, of course, because it’s school system was washed out by Hurricane Katrina.”

Not so. New Orleans schools were washed out. They could have been rebuilt as public schools. Instead a decision was made to replace them with charters. I suppose they could have replaced their incredibly corrupt public police force with Blackwater too, makinga bad situation worse.

It is intellectualy lazy to attribute New Orleans’ school conversion on Katrina. The schools were badly managed for decades, then, post-Katrina, a phoney ‘reform’ was put in place. People did that, not the weather.

Although Albany is oversaturated with charter schools and their impact on the city is significant, the percentage used for this story is inacurate.

Albany’s 11 taxpayer-supported charter schools enroll about 2,000 Albany students. That’s 19 percent of the city’s approximately 10,500 public-school students — still the highest percentage in New York state. There is no question that Albany has one of the most oversaturated charter-school environments in the nation.

Albany’s publicly funded, privately operated charter schools also enroll about 500 students from other districts — Schenectady, Troy, Bethlehem, Watervliet, etc. That puts the total enrollment of these 11 schools at about 2,500, which is the figure used to arrive at 24 percent of Albany’s 10,500 public-school students.

Additionally, charter-school enrollment in Albany has remained flat for two years in spite of the addition of three new schools. The State University of New York also closed one school, New Covenant Charter School, after the 2009-10 school year because of chronically poor performance and massive debt.

Over the same two-year period, the City School District of Albany’s enrollment has increased by about 500 students — about the same number of students who have returned to district schools from charter schools during that time. That includes 18 students who returned from charter schools in October.

Ohio is a state. What city in Ohio? As for Albany, the NYS Legislature voted themselves a pay raise tied to Charter School legislation during the Patacki administration. Legislators got a pay raise and NYS taxpayers/voters got Charter Schools. Public Charter Schools is incorrect. Private Charter Schools funded by public (taxpayers’)money is correct. Charter Schools are a private business. They are administered by for profit groups. Yet they are funded by taxpayers. Charter Schools and their for profit business supporters are unaccountable to those taxpayers who fund them. Duh! It’s another ripoff 4 NYS taxpayers. And NYS taxpayers foot the bill. NYS legislators got their pay raise. Another unfunded state legislative mandate was passed unto city taxpayers. Duh!

@Rocky Balboa,
Charter schools are not a business. Most charter schools are not administered by “for profit businesses”, and none of the ones in Albany are. Charter schools are more accountable by a long shot than traditional public schools. Until recently the rip-off for taxpayers, at least for the ones in Albany, has been to fund a school district to the tune of $20,000+ per student with numerous teachers making in excess of $90,000+ per year and many administrators making $100,000+ and still getting horrible results, even by urban school district standards. If teachers unions weren’t big campaign contributors this situation wouldn’t have been allowed to persist as long as it has. Charter schools are not an unfunded mandate, at least not any more than a traditional public school. Charter schools do not necessarily add anything to the total cost of educating a child, unless the administrators and school board are incompetent.

I’ve heard many rumors recently about the future of the Albany City School District. Could it be true that because of Albany’s low performing schools, the State will close them all and they will ALL become charter schools? Has there ever been a district in the US that is 100% charter? What would that look like?

I thought Charter Schools are owned and operated by Private Interests? Am I mistaken? I hate to disagree with you Radamus but Charter Schools are an unfunded mandate here in Albany NY because the citizens of Albany have never been given an opportunity to vote “Nay or Yeah” on whether we want charter schools in Albany. And who are the charter schools accountable to? A SUNY Board comprised of individuals who were appointed by the Pataki Administration to co-sign the legitimacy of charter schools? The only thing Charter Schools in Albany have proven to me is that privately run schools are not much better than public education schools. There are some things I do like about charter schools including using uniforms, I think all public schools should have them. And longer time in school/longer school terms. Beyond that, I am not convinced charter schools are much better than public schools, especially in light of the fact that charter schools can send back the students they don’t want to the public schools. This is a nice way to inflate your test scores,etc.
Do I have the answers as to why public schools underperform in some cases? No I don’t. Having met/befriended a number of teachers/people in the education field, I can tell you that I don’t think the teachers are the problem. Having mentored/coached kids in the city of Albany I can tell you from my perspective, I think many parents are invested/capable of being involved in their children’s education. Others are not so capable/choose not be involved and I think therein lies the biggest problem. Just my thoughts. John R.

According to the Open Book New York website of the NYS Comptroller’s Office, the 2009 expenditures per pupil in the Albany district were $15,767, based on a student population of 10373 (2008 enrollment figure). But the Debt Service is $1358 per pupil, which covers the cost of the school expansion effort, which was approved by the voters just before the Charter School development began. The city taxpayers have to pay that debt service whether the kids go to charters or not. So that leaves $14,409 per pupil for education, assuming the enrollment didn’t go up. So it looks like that figure of $14,072 for charter reimbursement approved by Governor Paterson is bumping up against the limit of what Albany can afford, which raises sustainability questions for me. However in other districts, it’s clearly an extreme request, already. Albany charters are supposedly enrolling kids from Schenectady, Watervliet and Bethlehem. Bethlehem pays $12,373 per student now, and Schenectady pays $12,435. Other school districts in the region pay far less- Shen pays only $10,277 and North Colonie pays $10,771. What is the rule here? If the Charters can claim $14,072 by state fiat, then out-of-Albany districts have to pay more for Charter enrollment than what they currently pay per student? Where is the parity in that? And if those districts don’t have to pay the $14,072, is the City of Albany supposed to pick up the difference? I don’t see the fairness in that. This system simply makes no sense. Why should there be a state-determined reimbursement rate? Surely that figure has to reflect higher education costs from downstate, and penalizes upstate districts that have worked to control costs.

teacher,
I’ve never heard of an entire district being converted to charter schools. I think the statistics quoted in the article are close to being correct, so the closest thing to what you’re describing is New Orleans. ACSD has actually made some progress in recent years, particularly at the elementary level and to a lesser extent the middle school level. However, the High School has been a horror show. If the current restructuring at the High School doesn’t work something more drastic will be done, and that may end up effecting all the schools in the district, not just the High School. The most likely thing that would happen is that the High School as it now exists would be disolved and replaced by charter schools and possibly smaller standalone traditional public high schools. If it gets to that point there’s also a strong possibility that the Mayor or some other outside institution will take over running the district. ACSD got in this mess because of self serving alliance of certain “corrupt” politicians, teachers, union leaders, and compliant school board members that were frequently elected by an inatentive public with less than 5% or registered voters!!! If you are a teacher at ACSD and you don’t want this to happen tell your union rep that you don’t want the union to protect bad teachers, that you do wnat them to do their part to make sure that the “bad kids” aren’t just “swept under the rug”, and that you do want them to do their part to make sure that the school district cooperates with anybody and everybody who wants to help the district and its students.

Colin,
Districts pay chart schools based on what the calculation is for their district. So Schenectady pays a lot less than Albany or Troy for resident students to attend a charter school (wherever it is located). I have no idea where you get your per pupil numbers from. Provide specific links?

I am a teacher in a New Orleans Public Charter School, who moved here after completing my masters at St. Rose. I came here to open a school from the ground up in 2007 and have been part of the authentic, groundbreaking reform going on here. The school reform that is happening here is very real. Charter schools are not the threat everyone thinks they are an if run well provide a quality education to students who would otherwise be denied them because of their socioeconomic status. Check out any one of the charter management organizations (KIPP, ReNew, FirstLine) here on the ground doing amazing work before you blast a city that’s on the cutting edge of education.

YOU need to do your research about charter schools and why they are allowed in districts…. there’s a lot of union propaganda against charter schools, charters do what districts failed to do because teachers became complacent- without over generalizing all teachers, many ineffective teachers are protected by unions, our kids need effective teachers in classrooms, mediocrity breeds mediocrity. Do your research before you knock a charter school or the charter school movement.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses. Colin, if you can provide them easily I’d aprreciate direct links to your references. If you don’t have them easily available hopefully I can find them without spending a lot of time.

It’s very easy to get caught up in arguements over specific small issues and forget the larger issue. The larger issue is “what can we do to make sure all our students have access to a good education.” In urban school districts like Albany it has been abundantly clear that poor students, particularly poor minoroity students, have been falling farther and farther behind. For years the ACSD’s response to this was “We expect our students to show up ready to learn. If a student isn’t ready to learn that’s not our problem. All these poor minority students aren’t ready to learn, so that’s the way it goes.” Well that might have been acceptable in 1960 when most countries of the world didn’t have public education of any kind, but it hasn’t been acceptable for years. These school districts have these kids under their care for more hours per day than anybody else does, and they should be able to adapt to kids who “aren’t showing up ready to learn”. As a result of the wrongheadedness of these districts the US has been falling farther and farther behind in the task to educate ALL our kids. Urban school districts were warned for years and years that they better shape up or drastic changes were going to be imposed from the outside. There was absolutely no reason for ACSD to not have improved on their own, since unlike many urban districts ACSD actually had a lot of money to spend per student. Instead of spending the money wisely on the students who needed it the most – poor minority students – it spent the money on exspensive college prep scores for the middle calss kids and sent the poorest kids to classrooms with no books and uncertified or incompetent teachers. Thank God for the advent of charter schools. Once there was competition from charter schools ACSD finally started doing something to improve. I should point out that almost all the students in these schools are minorities. The parents of these kids didn’t have the resources to fight the school district directly, but they sure as hell had what it took to get their kids out of ACSD school once a reasonable alternative came around. Of course now ACSD is trying to destroy these charter schools by illegally depriving them of funding. They and certain corrupt Albany politicians can’t wait for the charter schools to go away so they can add teacher positions that they can fill with their college education but mentally ill and substance abusing relatives like they always did in the past.